Deafening Silence

Deafening Silence

I took the kids with me to Home Depot today. I needed to pick up a plumbob..and aw heck, a jigsaw too. It got us out of the house for a while, and gave Amanda a chance to get ready for a friend's bridal shower this afternoon. So I put the kiddos in a shopping cart together to minimize these leg cramp problems they seem to develop in 'boring old tool stores that are SO boring'. So I was standing there checking out jigsaw blades and deciding if I should splurge for the multipack kit when suddenly I heard Harrison cut loose with ka-choo...ka-choo...ka-phflbbrbrbbsprddt. Oy. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and as I turned slowly to my right, I heard the rising volume of his mournful moaning, which further solidified what I knew I would see: great mountainous globules of snot quivering on his upper lip like so much polluted rubber cement threatening to goosh downward into grotesque walrus tuskaboogers. (grrfff)

But you see, that wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that I instantly knew I hadn't packed for this situation, and no tissue of any sort graced my linty pockets. I started in with these useless gestures, that I think I picked up from Mom, where I turn slightly from side to side while mincing my fingers as if trying to grab tools from some unseen cockpit of emergency materials. But jigsaw blades and routers aren't really going to help--humanely anyway. Meanwhile, Giselle is letting me know in no uncertain terms that she doesn't have any tissue to offer up to the cause. In retrospect, I should have used the hood of his cute little jacket, but instead, I whipped out my wallet, grabbed the first available business card and went to work in squeegie mode.

I was good I tell you--bevel in just under the curve of the upper lip and systematically wiggle upward in a rocking motion, finishing off with a slow, deliberate swipe to the right and outward, dragging out the nasal anchors until they snap like limp rubber bands onto the card. There was one last thing: where to put it? I could slap it under the shelf holding the saws like some sort of encrusted time-capsule I could hunt for years later and bring back to show to Harrison in front of his friends...or I could tuck it in my shoe. No thanks. That's when I noticed Giselle lavishing attention on a little coupon booklet she found in the bottom of the cart. It had Winnie the Pooh items featured on it, and had satiated her the whole time we were in there. It had to be sacrificed for the greater good. I grabbed it with profuse apologies and inserted the mucus-squeegie like some sort of perverse flower cutting and handed the booklet back to Giselle with warnings not to open to the last page. She was a bit put out to say the least, but insisted we take it with us anyway since "it can be washed". Bleah.

On the way back from Home Depot

It's so windy outside, I dread the aggravation of going out there and working on the garage. So, I'm putting it off.

The kids have been playing a game on the XBox called Fusion Frenzy. It's pretty tame, but they don't always agree on what constitutes fair play.

Apple Computer just opened up an online music store that doesnt stink like everything else up to this point. When the uproar over Napster got really hot a couple years ago, I realized I didn't feel good about getting my music that way, and dumped all the MP3s I had scored online. Since then, some online sources have opened up that basically 'rent' you the music for as long as you subscribe to their service. Pffith. No thanks to that too. I kept thinking, you know if somebody would just offer songs for a flat dollar per song, that would be perfect. And finally here ya go, Apple comes out with a 99¢ per song venue. Perfect! (Well if you have a Mac that is. The Windows version should be out by the end of the year though. ) I just bought my first 10 songs. Downloading over dialup isn't great, about 15 minutes per song, but next time I'll just set it to download overnight. I made sure one of the first songs I grabbed was Flake (Jack Johnson). Giselle decided a while back that she identified with some of the lyrics:

It seems to me that 'maybe'
It pretty much always means 'no'
So don't tell me you might just let it go
And often times we're lazy
It seems to stand in my way
Cause no one, no not no one
Likes to be let down
....
Please please please don't drag me
Please please please don't drag me
Please please please don't drag me down (daaaaaadyyy)

She likes to tack that last part on there. =)

A barrell of laughs I tellya.

Okay. I need to try and accomplish something out there in the bluster.

Later.